monster monday – panglott

Beasts of the Brackettverse: Venusian Nahali

Leigh Brackett‘s third published story concerns the disreputable space-rats, murderous villains, Terran Guard washouts, and scum scraped from across the Solar System who together make up the Stellar Legion. This force is guarding a circle of protective forts on the soggy ground that surrounds the swamplands of southern Venus, to protect the fertile uplands and plateaus from monstrous raiders, who wait only for the rainy season to begin.

Welcome to Venus:

Men…sweated in the sullen heat of the Venusian swamp-lands before the rains. …the eternal mists writhed in a thin curtain over the swamp, stretching for miles beyond the soggy earthworks…

The swamp folded them in. It is never truly dark on Venus, owing to the thick, diffusing atmosphere. There was enough light to show branching, muddy trails, great still pools choked with weeds, the spreading liha-trees with their huge pollen pods, everything dripping with the slow rain. …Fort and village were lost in sodden twilight.” (“The Stellar Legion”, Planet Stories, Winter 1940, 98)

The swamps are dangerous, not least the for the malarial fever that will inevitably fell any person traveling without helmet and coveralls. A traveler might make it through to ship out on a tramp freighter out of Lhiva, were it not for a greater danger: the Nahali.

nahali

Venusian Nahali
No. Enc.: 2d4 (6d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60′ (20′)
Swim: 120′ (40′)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 2
Attacks: 1 (touch)
Damage: 2d6 electricity or stun
Save: F2
Morale: 10
Hoard Class: XIX
XP: 47

Nahali are six-foot, scaly, anthropoid swamp-dwellers with red eyes, triangular mouths, and noseless faces. Nahali can communicate across long distances with a low, monotonous piping call, which they use also to pray to their rain gods, and can learn to speak with humans despite their otherwise low intelligence. Nahali are amphibious and must consume water through their skin to respire; this may be thick mist or rain. During the rainy season, they can leave the swamp in great numbers to raid upland areas remorselessly, but will suffocate out of contact with water, fog, or rain. Nahali will also quickly suffocate in clouds of soot or smoke, A Nahali’s most dangerous trait is the electrical charge generated throughout their body with which they can choose to stun or kill creatures that they touch. If the Nahali is merely attempting to stun a creature with its touch, that creature must make a saving through versus paralyzation or lose consciousness for 1d4 hours. If the Nahali is attempting to kill, the creature touched takes 2d6 electrical damage. Creatures that attack a Nahali with bare hands or metal weapons also suffer 2d6 electrical damage. However, Nahali bioelectricity makes them vulnerable to electricity that overloads their “bio-circuits”, and they take double damage from electrical attacks.

Locals who regularly fight these creatures have developed special weapons, such as the electro-pistol. An electro-pistol is a handheld weapon that fires an electrical bolt, which deals 2d6 electrical damage on a successful hit unless the target succeeds on a saving throw versus paralyzation. Creatures who are generally dry get a +10 bonus to this saving throw, but creatures who are soaking wet (such as Nahali) do not. Electrified moats and electro-cannons are also employed against Nahali raiders.

Nahali first appeared in Leigh Brackett’s short story “The Stellar Legion” (1940). The statistics above are adapted by this author for use with the Labyrinth Lord RPG.

Labyrinth Lord Bestiary: Yale

The yale is an antelope-like creature from medieval bestiaries that can swivel its horns around to confound attackers, I wrote it up, however, as a fantasy-campaign headcanon equivalent to the Klingon Sargh—any definitive similarities await a zoological expedition to Kronos, of course.

yale
Image source

Yale
No. Enc.: 0
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120′ (40′)
Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 3+3
Attacks: 1 (horn)
Damage: 1d8
Save: F3
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: None
XP: 100
This fierce heraldic beast has the body of a horse, the jaws of a boar, the horns and hooves of an oryx, and the tail of an elephant. Although they can survive on grazing, they are omnivorous and prefer to eat fruit, fungi, tubers, and carrion when available. A yale can swivel its horns in different directions, and can change between an offensive stance or defensive stance every round. Depending on the orientation of its horns, it gains either a +1 bonus to attack rolls or a +1 bonus to AC. Some savage tribes (especially orcs or neghai) train these wild creatures as warbeasts to bear riders or draw chariots, but they are rarely used as simple beasts of burden.

Labyrinth Lord Bestiary: Gatormount—”half horse and half alligator”

Back in the early 19th century, the backwoods pioneers of Kentucky and the Ohio River were commonly described as “half horse and half alligator” for their fierceness and woods lore. Here’s the War-of-1812 song “The Hunters of Kentucky”: “We’ll show [the foe] that Kentucky boys/Are alligator horses.” Here’s Mike Fink a-braggin’: “”I’m chockful o’ fight! I’m half wild horse and half cockeyed-alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red hot snappin’ turtle[!]”

How colorful is that!? Half the monsters of D&D are heraldic beasts come to life, and what better heraldic beast for the Appalachian backwoods and Ohiana than a creature that’s half horse and half alligator. It reminds me a bit of the erect crocodylomorphs from the Late Triassic, like Postosuchus (from North Carolina) and the Rauisuchidae.

Keep in mind, though, these Kentucky pioneers were a group of settlers all hot and ready to march into Indiana up to Prophetstown and fight Tecumseh—this is the political constituency for indian removal.

So here’s some game stats for Labyrinth Lord. They are slower than horses on open ground, but faster through rivers and swampy backcountry, and far more expensive to feed.

Gatormount
No. Enc. 0 (1d8)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 120′ (40′)
Swim: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 6
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 1
Damage: 1d8
Save: F2
Morale: 7
Hoard Class: None
XP: 50
The gatormount is a chivalric beast of the river folk, and has the body of a horse and the head, scales, feet, and tail of an alligator. They stand 6 feet tall at the shoulder and weigh about 1,500 pounds. These fearsome creatures are trained as combat mounts by some river folk, and such gatormounts have a morale of 9. Gatormounts hunt near water in swamps, plains or forests, although females gather to build nesting mounds in swamps or marshes in the spring.

Beasts of the Brackettverse: The Martian Khom

“Rikatva and Tchava, the Martian Reclaimed Areas. The Tri-Council—great minds of three worlds—had poured money into them in an effort to give the unwanted overflow of a crowded civilization a chance to get off the public charity rolls. Water, brought in tanker ships from wetter worlds; Venusian humus, acid phosphate, nitrate nitrogen, to make the alkaline desert fruitful; after that, crude shacks and cruder implements, scrimped together with what was left from the funds wrung so hardly from resentful taxpayers.
“It was common talk throughout the Solar System that the Areas were a failure. Only the destitute still had hope.” (78)
“…Huddled and squalid under the huge loom of the water tanks, the cheerlessness of Thern was horrible; here and there rose the shattered marble spires of the ancient city, mute prophets of futility.” (79)
“…The road they followed out of Thern ran between dusty fields, set to beans and alfalfa and yellow Martian grapes. Here and there the land was stripped bare of green things as though a plague of locusts had descended.” (81)

Leigh Brackett‘s first published story, “Martian Quest” (in Astounding Science Fiction, Feb. 1940), is a pulpy yarn about hardscrabble settlers in the deserts of Mars. Brackett packs a fair bit of worldbuilding into this short tale, introducing vaards and Venusians. There’s a dangerous monster, but it’s not quite the tentacled, man-eating kind. Here’s some game statistics for Labyrinth Lord.

Martian Khom
No. Enc.: 1 (1d4×10)
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 90′ (30′)
Armor Class: 2
Hit Dice: 11
Attacks: 1 (tail or trample)
Damage: 2d8 or 2d6
Save: F6
Morale: 8
Hoard Class: None
XP: 2000
A Martian khom is a great desert lizard. A khom has an triangular reptilian head, a yawning jaw with a set of rat-like incisors, and a horny frill. Its body is eight feet long, covered in thick armor plates, and supported on sturdy, clawed legs. The khom’s main weapon is the spiked mace at the end of its twelve-foot tail, which can kill a man with a single blow. They often attack by charging past or trampling a foe and swinging at them as they pass. Although not carnivorous, Khoms are extremely aggressive herbivores and likely to attack those who interrupt their feeding. They are known as “the Destroyer” for their ability to strip farmland, break and eat wooden buildings, and gnaw scrub, cactus, and the vines of the yellow Martian grape to the ground. Individual khoms frequently kill farm workers attempting to drive them off, but the creatures will swarm by the dozens to attack creatures that smell like the musk of their wounded juveniles.

Martian Quest Khom

Monster Monday: Kaldane and Rykor

Here’s some Barsoomiana for Labyrinth Lord. The Chessmen of Mars is one of the better of a pretty bananas series, with both the game of jetan and these pretty creepy creatures. Burroughs’s kaldanes couldn’t transform people into rykors, but it certainly adds an entertaining layer of wickedness and body horror.

Image of kaldane and rykor

Kaldane
No. Enc.: 1d4 (3d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 60’ (20’)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 3
Attacks: 3 (2 claws, bite)
Damage: 1d3/1d3/1d3+paralysis
Save: F3
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: XX
XP: 95
The kaldane are a species of loathsome, highly intelligent insectile aberrations. Individuals resemble squamous ticks about the size of a human head, with three bulbous eyes, a pair of scythelike chelae, and a mouth wreathed in slimy, dangling, paralytic tentacles. Kaldanes are the degenerate descendants of a formerly powerful planetary race with prodigious mental powers and marvelous alien technology. These unsentimentally calculating and coldly rational beings view other creatures as nothing more than food or livestock, and exist in symbiosis with their headless rykor. Rykors—and surgically modified humans—are mounts, food, and beasts of burden. A kaldane joined with a rykor fights as a single creature with two attacks (the rykor’s weapon attack and the kaldane’s bite attack), and all damage taken by the pair accrues to the rykor (although an exceptional or vorpal attack might dislodge the kaldane from its mount).

Kaldanes attack with claws and a venomous bite. Any successful bite attack requires the opponent to attempt a saving throw versus paralysis, or become paralyzed for 2d4 turns. This paralysis may be cured with cure light wounds. Elves are immune to the paralysis of kaldanes, and the paralysis cannot take effect on humanoids larger than ogres.

Kaldanes lair in narrow, subterranean warrens, often capped by towers guarding large plantations. Their lairs are always guarded by a herd of 6d6 rykors. Kaldanes outside their warrens will always be mounted and accompanied by 1d4 additional rykors each. A kaldane queen is an exceptional kaldane, who attacks like a monster of 6 HD, and all damage dealt receives a bonus of +1. In addition, a kaldane queen has a charm gaze (as the charm person spell) that takes effect if a victim peers into a queen’s eyes. A kaldane queen is always accompanied by a loyal bodyguard, totaling 1d4 individuals. The bodyguards each have 4d6 hit points, and attack as monsters with 4 HD. All kaldanes in the presence of the queen have a morale score of 11.

Kaldanes spawn from eggs laid by the parthenogenic queen. After decapitating a helpless or dying humanoid, a kaldane queen can surgically transform the creature’s body into a living rykor using its razor-sharp chelae and various secretions. This process takes several hours and irrevocably slays the original creature, transforming its body into a horrifying living aberration.

Kaldanes originally appeared in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Chessmen of Mars (1922).

Rykor
No. Enc.: 2d4 (6d6)
Alignment: Chaotic
Movement: 90’ (30’)
Armor Class: 5
Hit Dice: 3+1
Attacks: 1 (weapon)
Damage: 1d6+1 or weapon+1
Save: F4
Morale: 9
Hoard Class: None
XP: 65
The rykors or acephali are scaly humanoid aberrations that resemble headless lizardfolk, with two long eyestalks and a simple mouth protruding from the stump of their neck. Their immense strength grants them a +1 bonus to damage. Stupid and highly aggressive when uncontrolled, rykors were created by the kaldanes to serve as mounts, food, and beasts of burden. A few are surgically modified humans, without scales but covered in hideous scars. Rykors are thus vulnerable to charm effects and telepathic suggestion, and are the perfect thrall of a kaldane mounted on its neck. Kaldanes are unsentimental about their rykors, but esteem well-bred, strong, and attractive rykors like prize thoroughbreds. Rykors are found on the surface or underground near the towers and subterranean lairs of kaldane.

Rykors originally appeared in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Chessmen of Mars (1922).